Monkey gets upset about receiving unequal pay (Video)

Dutch primatologist and ethologist Frans de Waal shows a video of two Capuchin monkeys in side-by-side cages. Each monkey is given the same task to complete: handing the experimenter a rock. Their "pay" is a slice of cucumber. But when the experimenter starts paying one of the monkeys in grapes (which the monkeys like better than cucumbers), the monkey who was being paid in cucumbers protests.
(Via 22 Words)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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kiwidebz

If you pay peanuts, you get… oh, never mind.
CastanhasDoPara

Proof positive that creatures with the capacity to think universally get uppity when things are obviously unfair.

As a corollary I posit that the Wallstreeters are either sub-intelligent slugs or are amoral, unethical jerks, or both.
- GlyphGryph
  
  Oh no, wall streeters are more than capable of getting pissed as hell if things are unfair.
  
  Just notice which of the two monkeys “recognize unfairness” and get upset about it.
- waetherman
  
  I think the point is that whichever monkey is getting paid less will think that the system is unfair, while I’m sure that further tests would show that the monkey getting paid more believes that he is smarter and/or working harder and therefore deserves to get paid more.
  - SamSam
    
    The fact that the cucumber-getter is getting all upset just shows that he’s lazy and dependent on the government. If he had had the brilliant foresight to be placed in the right-hand cage, he would be getting justly rewarded with grapes, but you’ll never get the ungrateful sod to understand that.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Bitch, your cucumber looks fine to me.
    - http://profiles.google.com/macrumpton Michael Crumpton
      
      Fully 47% of monkeys are willingly in left hand cages out of sheer laziness and lack of good work ethics, when with just a little determination and hard work they could be in right hand cages and enjoying the fruits of their labors (so to speak).
  - CastanhasDoPara
    
    Indeed, unfortunately they are just trained monkeys, fed at the whim of the human and therefore neither of them is really any better off or better than the other and certainly not better off than the human. Which I suspect a lot of the top echelons of society (human) think that they are superior creatures and that all their “serfs” are just little monkeys singing and dancing in a cage for table scraps.
    
    Clearly it’s not the guy down the hall with a nicer cubicle or even the guy a few floors up with an actual office we should be focusing on as to why our lot in life stinks; it’s the guys on the outside of the box looking at all their dancing little monkeys toiling away for a handful of fruit while they kick back and eat steak. Or something like that anyway.
Samantha Roberts

I was left with the overwhelming question…..did that monkey ever get a grape? When the test was over?
- cfuse
  
  They were both euthanised and had their brains dissected. Then the researcher ate all the remaining grapes and cucumber.
UncaScrooge

If the monkey is protesting like an American, he’ll demand that the other monkey’s grapes be downgraded back to cucumber slices. It’s only fair.

If the monkey is protesting like a foreign anarchist, he’ll demand that he be paid in grapes like the other guy. Further study is warranted.
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones
  
  Meanwhile, a third monkey who received 4,765 grapes thinks these two are fucking slackers who should be lucky to get half a cucumber slice when monkeys overseas are getting a third a cucumber slice for the same work.
http://twitter.com/mmmPi mmmPi

In our house we often use the expression “where’s my grape,” to describe unfair situations (we heard about these tests several years ago).
- Shibi_SF
  
  I like grapes so I’d have to twist up your phrase and say… “Just take your cucumber and shaddup about it!”
http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

I saw a thing once about chimps being made to share their bunches of grapes, but one chimp did this by eating all the grapes and then sharing just the stalks with the other chimp.
“What? He got half the bunch! The half made of stalks.”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

Someday the monkeys will realize the real solution is to cooperate in cracking open the head of the experimenter with the rock, putting an end to these manipulative games.
- Diogenes
  
  Just wait until cuke-monkey gets a chance to sink it’s teeth into the hand of unfairness. Debts will be paid!
- jhertzli
  
  Won’t that be the end of both the cucumbers and grapes? Or is fair starvation preferable?
timquinn

We are talking about unequal pay for the same work and all people can think of is Wallstreet.

Hello!
- disillusion
  
  I know right? If anything, this is the equivalent of the whole gender disparity with equal pay. For Wallstreet it would be as if the second monkey threw poo at the examiner and got a bushel of grapes.
  - Diogenes
    
    Or the grape monkey got the experimenter to give him half of the cukes on top of all the grapes, as a bailout
- Diogenes
  
  Gee, maybe it’s because the presenter said just that.
- http://profiles.google.com/macrumpton Michael Crumpton
  
  When you are talking about inequality and disproportionate compensation Wall Street is the epitome of both.
Modano

Capuchin monkeys are people too, my friend!
http://twitter.com/scroeser sky croeser

This totally seems like the kind of groundbreaking experiment that it’s worth keeping another sentient being in a cage for! Obviously we humans are making great strides in understanding ‘fairness’.
Boundegar

Holy hell he looks exactly like Bill Murray. Mannerisms, even!
mcaron00

Mitt Romney: “50% of monkeys are getting free food from lab technicians, yet they see themselves as victims. I think they only have themselves to blame.”
retepslluerb

Fun fact: Primatologists make less money than bankers.
- Ipo
  
  But bankers get far less monkey than primatologists. So there’s that.
666beast1

Go little monkey! Rage against the machine!
http://www.facebook.com/vreijs Victor Reijs

This is very in line with the idea in the Book Animals in Transition (of Temple Gradin). Great to see this behavoir!!! So human.